About The Mayor

Senior love lives abound in The Mayor, the true story of an 88-year-old tailchaser, an adoring widow, and a raunchy gossip queen living it up in a retirement home in Texas. A 68-minute documentary crowd-pleaser, The Mayor explores the lives of a handful of vivacious seniors continuing to make meaning, search for connections, and ultimately triumph in old age. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram praised the film as "a true discovery", and The Oxford American literary magazine called The Mayor "one of those lucky few [docs] that, once viewed, sticks in the mind like only the deepest, truest art can."

About the Guest

JARED SCHEIB (Director, Producer, DP, Editor)

Jared Scheib is a director and artist-entrepreneur born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He earned his B.A. from the University of Southern California, where he studied film production in the School of Cinematic Arts and neuroscience as an inaugural member of the Brain and Creativity Institute. After graduating in mid-2008, Jared directed, produced, shot, and edited his first feature documentary film, The Mayor, which has played festivals worldwide. Among other venues, his films have been exhibited at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood, the Dallas Museum of Art, and on Texas and Israeli television. Jared develops and directs original content for the stage as well, having premiered in 2011 his first play in Los Angeles, "Wrestles With Machista". On the heels of its success, he has developed and is slated to direct two more one-person autobiographical plays. In early 2012, Jared won the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science's social media contest with his commercial, "Do You Believe in a Secular America?" In addition, Jared manages friend and artist, Cecelia Webber, whose human bodies photography artwork has gone viral worldwide. Jared believes that content is king, and to that end he imbues his works with tenderness, subtlety, and intensity, striving to emphasize what makes art meaningful: honest emotion.

Director's Statement

I spent so much time in retirement communities, nursing homes, and hospitals growing up that I felt I might as well have gotten a room for myself. My dad would drive us forty-five minutes in each direction just to have dinner with his parents — my grandparents — at their progressive care facility in Dallas. I would eat Melba Toast as we all sat around the table. We didn’t have a whole lot to talk about necessarily, but what was important was only that we were there, spending time with them.

At the nursing home, as visitors we were a rarity. Everyone would crowd around as I played piano for an hour or my brother played his euphonium. They all wanted to feel like we were visiting them too. I would play the same songs over and over, but no one minded that they were listening to the same thing on repeat: they were so happy for young people like me and my brother to be there. And so it always made me happy as well, to see how what seemed like so little to me at that time could brighten up their lives so much. They would always ask me, “When will you be back?”

As I witnessed my grandparents fight against dementia, physical degeneration, and illness in order to continue to live and to love me and my family, I was deeply affected for years. For my dad’s parents, my family and I were for so long everything they kept up the fight for. As a young adult with a strong desire to honor their fight, I realized that it was time to go back. I set out to understand an age group and time in one’s life that is covered with such skew in America: the elderly and life in old age.

For me, The Mayor was and is an opportunity to engage with a generation whose story typically goes untold; or, when it is told, it’s typically one of dementia, depression, debilitation, and death. But there’s very clearly another side to old age: one that thrives with fulfillment, meaning, sophistication, relationships, and wondrous possibility. This is the story that I hoped to find and capture, and fortunately I found a handful of amazing seniors who embodied this reality. I am elated to present The Mayor as a testament to the triumph of the human spirit, even in the latest years of one’s life. Sam Berger, Dorothy June Wyll, Ceil Schwartz, and the rest of the seniors in the film and at the community have been and continue to be an inspiration to me, and they have given us all such an incredible opportunity to see how, contrary to stereotype, life in old age truly can be just as glorious as any other time in life.

– Jared Scheib

About the SCA Alumni Screening Series

The School of Cinematic Arts invites you to an exciting free screening series featuring a dynamic selection of new feature films by SCA alumni and faculty throughout the Spring 2012 semester. All screenings and events will be free of charge and open to the public, although we do ask for an electronic reservation for each screening, which can be made through the website for each individual screening. Many screenings will be overbooked to ensure that capacity is met in the theater. Some screenings will be run from digital sources.

Check-In & Reservations

This screening is free of charge and open to the public. Please bring a valid ID or print out of your reservation confirmation, which will automatically be sent to your e-mail account upon successfully making an RSVP through this website. Doors will open at 2:30 P.M.

All SCA screenings are OVERBOOKED to ensure seating capacity in the theater, therefore seating is not guaranteed based on RSVPs. The RSVP list will be checked in on a first-come, first-served basis until the theater is full. Once the theater has reached capacity, we will no longer be able to admit guests, regardless of RSVP status.

Parking

The USC School of Cinematic Arts is located at 900 W. 34th St., Los Angeles, CA 90007. Parking passes may be purchased for $10.00 at USC Entrance Gate #5, located at the intersection of W. Jefferson Blvd. & McClintock Avenue. We recommend parking in outdoor Lot M or V, or Parking Structure D, at the far end of 34th Street. Please note that Parking Structure D cannot accommodate tall vehicles such as SUVs. Metered street parking is also available along Jefferson Blvd.